Paying Fees for First Year Students Feasible Dr Clement Apaak

A member of the National Democratic Congress’ manifesto Committee, Dr. Clement Apaak, has defended the proposal made by the former President and flag bearer for the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, to scrap tertiary fees for all first year students.

Dr. Clement Apaak said, “One of the obstacles students face is their ability to pay fees and it has recently become obvious that the number of students who write WASSCE and proceed to the university is not encouraging and this is because the money to pay fees is a problem."

“When we engaged with youth groups on how to resolve this, waiving off fees for first-year students came up strongly.

“From the figures that we have, if we are to go by some information that has been put out by our good brother Kofi Asare of Africa Education Watch, they estimate that if one was to look at the number of students who took up places in tertiary institutions in the 2023/2024 academic year, they are less than 200,000 and when you look at the academic fees of first-year students on average, it works out to anywhere between GHcent;2,000 and GHcent;2,300 thereabout.

“So if we were to use that as a base, we could posit that the policy will cost less than GHcent;300 million a year and of course, student numbers fluctuate each year, so it is doable and if we were to pluck revenue loopholes, we should be able to mobilise the resources to fund this proposal," he said.

Dr. Clement Apaak’s defence comes in response to a varied uncertainties expressed by some Ghanaians over the announcement made by former President John Dramani Mahama to help alleviate the worries of parents and first year tertiary students over their inability to pay for their first year fees by absorbing it.

He argued that the proposed policy aims to address this issue if the NDC wins the upcoming general elections.

During the NDC youth manifesto launch in Accra on Monday, August 12, the flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, promised to introduce the policy to support struggling students.


Kobina Darlington/